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On July 4th, we went to meet Matt and Kaye on the Lower East Side and sweated around looking for a restaurant and ended up at the Greek place across the street from Matt’s apartment. We ordered half the menu at the restaurant, hungry and heat-struck and frazzled, and couldn’t finish it, and brought most of it home in heavy bags. I don’t think it’s possible to be so happy that I wouldn’t be jealous of friends who are in the first few months of love. Later they both posted videos on Instagram of people setting off fireworks on the street below the fire escape, a small rocketing line up to the sky and then a bright boom, over and over again, something that seems like it could kill you, and doesn’t. That was always my dream of this city, watching it from a fire escape, in it and not in it, like the inconsequential angels stuck in cloudy edges of paintings, above the grasping human action. My dad described that version of New York from when he first lived here, a place viewed from the fire escape five floors up from the street, a place that felt like when people in movies smoke cigarettes, a place where it was always the hottest day of the year.

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